Thread of the Spider

Miller

1

PROVO, UTAH

APRIL 1940

Knute cradled Nora, while she cradled his .45 automatic. Never be caught unarmed, they’d decided the moment they’d gone into business together. She snuggled. He squeezed. The .45 glistened with gun oil.

Lightning flashed, thunder hard on its heels. The morning was dark with the promise of a deeper gloom.

Knute leaned close to the windshield, bringing Nora along with him, to peer up at the Wasatch Mountains, where towering thunderheads were boiling over the sheer eleven-thousand-foot peaks. Near the base of one granite tower a whitewashed Y marked the presence of nearby Brigham Young University.

Dance music on the Packard’s radio faded. An announcer said, This is KSL, Salt Lake City. The massive storm front, which has already dropped more than five inches of rain, is moving south. Flash-flood warnings have been issued as far as the Arizona border. Areas along the Jordan River are being evacuated, and—

Knute switched off the radio.

We picked a fine day for it, Nora said, pointing her nose at the First National Bank of Provo across Center Street. Her breath steamed the windshield.

For luck, she added and kissed the man who had been her lover since high school.

He broke contact, grinning. You’re my luck. Besides, cops don’t like getting wet any better than real people. I figure they’re all down at the drugstore swilling Postum.

Nora crossed her fingers. They hadn’t fired a shot in anger for three bank raids now. For effect was another matter. And they prided themselves on never having killed anybody. Wounded, yes, but definitely not killed.

Lightning lit up the street like a flash camera. Inside the bank, lights flickered.

That’s all we need, Knute said, wiping mist from the rain-splattered windshield. If the power goes, we’ll be working in the dark.

Up and down Center Street, lights flickered in the tidy store windows. There was no traffic on the streets. The shopkeepers who had to be at work were already there. Their customers had more sense.

Knute tapped the dashboard clock. Automobile clocks were notoriously unreliable, but not their Packard. It was the best money could buy. A 1937 convertible sedan, maroon with a V-12 engine whose 175 horsepower could challenge anything on the road. Its luxuries, besides an accurate clock, included power-assisted brakes and clutch.

Ten o’clock, he said. Time to go to work.

Knute gave her one last hug before reaching into the backseat to grab the Thompson submachine gun. Gently, he laid it in Nora’s lap as he took back his .45.

She nodded once, then went to work, checking the weapon quickly and expertly. The Thompson was her trademark. When newspapers ran her photo, they invariably picked the one with her holding the Thompson like a baby, while Knute stood beside her, his arm draped over her shoulder like a proud father in a family portrait.

Together, they were a legend in Utah, every bit the equal of Bonnie and Clyde. Their exploits were followed as closely as Joe DiMaggio’s batting average. Word was that they’d robbed a hundred banks and were millionaires because of it. In truth, Provo’s First National was to be number sixteen. Their last bank, up Highway 91 in Brigham City, had barely kept them in eating money the three days they’d splurged on their way south to Provo.

Some news hawks called the pair modern-day Robin Hoods, stealing only from rich bankers and the hated federal government, hated in Utah since the day President James Buchanan sent an army against Brigham Young and his polygamist followers.

Followers of Knute and Nora said they’d never be caught. Certainly, no true son of Utah would ever give them up, not in this lifetime.

Nora finished her inspection and cocked the Thompson.

If Mother could only see me now, she said with a wistful half-grin.

Knute started to say something, then thought better of it. Nora’s mother had disowned her daughter the day she took up with him.

We’re immortal, he said.

The clouds burst open. The Packard’s roof thundered under the onslaught.

You see, he laughed. We’re home free. No cop ever born would leave his nice, hot Postum on a day like this. Knute laughed in disdain. He was a coffee drinker and looked down on the strict Mormons, whose religion forbade the drink. It was almost harder to buy a good cup of coffee in Mormon Utah than it was to rob a bank.

They trotted across the street, bent over at the waist to keep their weapons dry. A Thompson, Nora had learned from past experience, could be cranky.

The guard opened the door for them. Nora thanked him while Knute was knocking him senseless. A good entrance was important. It kept the customers in line and the guard from causing trouble. Somehow, bashing bank guards didn’t hurt the couple’s image. Usually it never made the papers.

But today, there wasn’t a customer in sight. Just three dispirited-looking tellers and a bank manager in a three-piece funeral suit. No need for Nora to fire her trademark burst into the ceiling.

She eased her finger from the trigger, feeling let down, and herded the tellers toward the open vault. Knute was there ahead of her with the manager.

Just inside the vault stood a metal table stacked with money. That’s what I call service, Knute said.

Nora had never seen that much in one pile. Neither of them had expected such a haul from a Provo bank. The town, though Utah’s third largest, only had a population of about eighteen thousand.

We should have brought a gunnysack was on the tip of Nora’s tongue when she spotted the black satchel sandwiched between stacks of money.

Everybody lie down on the floor in the back of the vault, she said, making her point with the barrel of the Thompson. Usually her ceiling burst made the gesture all the more threatening. But even without it, the suckers went down like tenpins.

Nora nodded her satisfaction at them, like encouraging children. It was part of their routine. Bystanders were her job, since the Thompson took two hands.

Knute, with only a .45 to worry about, always worked the cash drawers and vault, though today every dollar had been ready and waiting for them.

Knute glanced inside the satchel, then turned it upside down. Papers spilled out.

His next glance was at Nora, who’d positioned herself so she could watch the door and her tenpins at the same time.

We’re clear, she said. It’s raining cats and dogs out there.

Knute snatched up one of the papers and held it up to the light. From where Nora was standing, it looked heavy and impressive, like a gilt-edged bond.

Knute shrugged. What the hell. We might as well take everything. He stuffed the papers back into the satchel and crammed the money on top. Ready?

Ready, Nora repeated, eyeing the vault’s ceiling. The exchange was part of their routine. Probably the ceiling was concrete, a foot thick at least. A burst into it might ricochet, killing everybody. She clenched her teeth in disappointment. Robbing the Provo First National was like taking candy from a baby.

2

BAPTIST WASH, UTAH

JULY 15, 2001

Nicolette Scott stepped back as far as the slot canyon allowed, a claustrophobic three feet, and peered at the sheer rock wall looming above her. Seventy-five feet up, maybe halfway to the top, she saw her objective, a small cave so deep in shadow it reminded her of a black mouth gaping in the dazzling red Wingate Sandstone.

She stretched her neck and shoulders, trying to work out the kinks in her muscles. Just getting this far had been a bitch, all because of Elliot’s Rules. Her father, Elliot Scott, guru of the ancient Anasazi, laid them down with every class he taught and every dig he led. She was violating one of those rules, Do not climb alone, at this very moment. She didn’t see how she could avoid it. Her father was paired with another archaeologist from the University of Utah. They were working Burro Gulch, three slot canyons to the south of her. That left the two grad students who were sticking to each other like glue. She had no idea what they were up to. Talk about feeling like a fifth wheel.

She was only supposed to be conducting a survey of possible sites. Any first-year student could do that. She scanned the crooked canyon, aptly named Boyle’s Twist. It was one snakelike bend after another, five feet at its widest, narrowing to shoulder width more often than not.

Elliot’s Rules, she muttered, while eyeing the cave speculatively. There was no sign of the hand- and footholds the Anasazi would have cut into the sandstone a thousand years ago. Wind and rain eroded everything eventually, but here, in a slot canyon like this, heavy rain would come as a flash flood, scouring even the hardest stone. She wondered how the Anasazi had dealt with the ever present danger. They must have had a compelling reason to locate in such an inhospitable place. Did the ancient enemy, the Navajo translation for the word Anasazi, also have some fearsome enemy?

Lack of handholds proved nothing, except that new ones would have to be cut, but high enough from the canyon floor to keep hikers and relic hunters from reaching them. That was another of Elliot’s Rules. Do not invite the uninitiated to despoil the sites.

In all, nearly a dozen slot canyons fanned out from Baptist Wash, site of an old mining town that had once stood huddled against the base of an immense sandstone reef. That reef, just west of the Henry Mountains in southern Utah, marked the beginning of desert badlands so desolate that map legends bore the warning: CARRY DRINKING WATER IN THIS AREA. The Spaniards who originally explored the area looking for El Dorado had named it the Devil’s Door.

Elliot’s initial survey of the canyons turned up suitable caves in only four of the deeply eroded ravines. Of those, Elliot thought Burro Gulch the most likely. Not only did those canyons look right, he said, with large, cliff dwelling–size caves, but they had been mentioned specifically in Hyrum Boyle’s diary.

Boyle, an amateur archaeologist who devoted all of his retirement years to roaming Utah’s vast desert wilderness, had bequeathed his collection of Indian artifacts to the University of New Mexico. There, in basement storage, his diary lay unread until Elliot stumbled across it.

The canyons nearest Baptist Wash revealed little, but Burro Gulch yielded some promising finds, though there wasn’t time to pursue them, Boyle had written. Burro Gulch, along with several other ravines, were considered sacred by the local Indians. The chief himself once told me that the high caves in there were ancient burial sites and taboo to his people for as long as the sun had set and the stars had shone.

Taboos were a good sign, Elliot preached, because they preserved archaeological sites from the superstitious. He was very excited about the possibility of actually finding a formal Anasazi burial site. None had ever been discovered.

In addition to the diary, Boyle’s collection had included some of the finest examples of Anasazi basket work ever found. Unfortunately, Boyle hadn’t bothered to label his finds. So Elliot didn’t know which, if any of the artifacts, had actually come from the Baptist Wash area, let alone Burro Gulch.

Nick eased off her backpack and sat down to rest, leaning her head against the sandstone wall so she could gaze up at her cave. Hers because Elliot and Reed Austin, the University of Utah man, had both dismissed Boyle’s Twist as an unlikely site. It was too narrow and too quirky, just like the man whose name it bore. Besides, Boyle, nicknamed Baptist Boyle, hadn’t mentioned it in his diary. A hide tanner by profession, Boyle had ended his days, so legend said, looking for a mother lode that never existed, with only Indian artifacts to show for his efforts.

Nick knew how he must have felt. She’d had the perfect job surrounded by the love of her life, historical airplanes, and she’d lost it. The disaster in Alaska had not been her fault, but she’d been dumped from the Smithsonian. Dumped was her word; staff reduction was theirs. As a result, she’d been forced to take a summer job with her father.

Well, hunting Anasazi with Elliot was a hell of a lot better than spending the summer brooding and waiting for someone to respond to the dozens of résumés she’d sent out. Wasted paper, Elliot had declared, since a perfectly good staff position is waiting for you here in Albuquerque.

Working for you?

"I am chairman of the department."

Aren’t there rules against nepotism?

Only Elliot’s Rules apply in my department, he’d answered.

Nick smiled at the recollection. She should have said, two archaeologists in one family was one too many. Certainly two archaeologists on a dig often added up to one too many. And her presence here brought the count to three, not to mention Reed Austin’s kowtowing grad students. In addition, it was never a good idea to have two academic institutions involved in a dig. The politics got too complicated.

Nick lowered her eyes to appraise Boyle’s Twist one more time. The canyon corkscrewed so badly she couldn’t see more than twenty feet in either direction. Her cave, one of many, had the advantage of being nearest to the canyon’s mouth. Beyond it, in the space of half a mile, she’d counted nine more caves, before turning back to get the lightweight aluminum extension ladder, which was rarely used.

With a sigh, she stretched her legs out as far as the opposite sandstone wall allowed. Though she was only five-six, she couldn’t straighten her knees. That made Boyle’s Twist less than four feet wide at this point.

So maybe Elliot was right. Maybe the Anasazi would have felt as hemmed in and claustrophobic as she did.

She craned her neck. Not a cloud showed in the narrow strip of morning sky visible above. She shaded her eyes and squinted against the glare of sunlight on sandstone, and that’s when she saw something. She jumped to her feet and paced, one way, then the other, studying her cave from different angles. Forty feet up from where she stood, what looked like a series of narrow ledges jutted from the cliff face, almost like stepping stones leading to the mouth of the cave. With luck, they’d be wide enough to use as foot- and handholds, though she’d have to move cautiously in case the rock was rotten.

What bothered her was the liplike bulge of stone at the base of the cave. Getting past it would be an accomplishment.

Nick checked her watch. Ten-fifteen, still the cool of the day, though in southern Utah in July, the cool of the morning was in the neighborhood of 85 degrees. God knows what it would be by the time she’d have to lug the ladder back to camp.

Stop feeling sorry for yourself. The words echoed in the canyon.

She snorted. Sorry wasn’t the right word. Foolish was more like it. The climb ahead of her was difficult, not to mention dangerous, thanks to that cave lip.

Nick shook her head. The thrill of the hunt, the prospect of finding an artifact untouched for a thousand years, outweighed the risk. Besides, how many times had she heard her father say discovering an artifact was better than sex? Well, the thrill lasted longer, that was for sure.

In any case, those sandstone ledges were as good as an advertisement that humans had at one time used this cave.

Chances were, the cave wasn’t good for anything but bats, anyway, she reminded herself. So why risk it? To prove that she wasn’t as useless as she felt. An out-of-work historical archaeologist who’d screwed up her last two jobs, who’d …

"Now you are feeling sorry for yourself." She laughed out loud. The sound bounced off the narrow walls of the canyon and echoed up the wash.

So start climbing.

Nick weighed the pros and cons of leaving her heavy backpack behind. Her usual equipment had been augmented by additional water and a heavy rope ladder. That much weight would affect her balance while climbing. But in the desert, the rules of survival outweighed even Elliot’s code. Always carry your own water. Never depend on finding it.

She raised the ladder to its full extension, then scooped holes in the dirt to place its feet. She moved a few rocks to steady the ladder. All she would need is for the ladder to slip sideways when she was halfway up.

She fished a water bottle from her backpack and drank deeply, saturating herself against the rising heat. Here, in the canyon’s shady bottom, it wasn’t bad, but she’d be climbing into sunlight. There, the temperature would be well over a hundred.

She pulled on her backpack, ignoring the immediate complaint from her neck muscles. She jumped up and down on the bottom rung to test its stability. With a deep breath she started up the ladder. When its rungs ran out, she went to work, chopping handholds into the red sandstone. Within moments, sweat was pouring down her face, stinging her eyes and half-blinding her.

Elliot’s earlier pronouncement goaded her on. The caves in Boyle’s Twist are too small. The Anasazi built enclaves for mutual protection, not single family homes. They weren’t suburbanites.

The moment she cleared the last ladder rung and anchored her toe in the hole she’d just cut, she had to work one-handed, one hand clinging on for dear life, the other wielding the short handled axe. A mistake now and …

Concentrate, she told herself. Mistakes weren’t allowed, not here. Make one and she’d kill herself, or worse yet lie in a heap at the bottom of Boyle’s Twist waiting for her father to come to the rescue.

By the time she’d cut ten handholds, her right arm was shaking with the strain of working above her head. Her left arm was shaking because her fingers could never relax their grip. The backpack didn’t help either. Its straps were cutting into her shoulders like knives, and the constant drag of its weight was sapping her strength.

What the hell had she been thinking? If she’d left the pack on the canyon floor, she could have gone back for it once the new hand- and footholds were in place.

She stopped cutting and clung to the cliff with both hands to rest. The idea of jettisoning her backpack was alluring, but accomplishing it without losing her balance was another matter. Nick sighed and looked up. She still had a long way to go. Retreat beckoned. Start over without the pack, she told herself. Or better yet, try tomorrow when you can get someone to come with you.

Done, she decided, and was about to lower her eyes when she spotted a series of